and more more more

so thursday -
started with roo in novice
worked heeling with one group going around the inside of the ring, and the second group on the outside of the ring -s he did well. terry said i need to reward her verbally for her awesome position, but i also need to stop trying to make such contact with her because it pushes her back - she's not rah and she's not going to be able to give me such in your face-ness that rah does, so trying to get it from her is pushing her back while we do things. i did a lot of her heeling in the beginning with heavy toy reward and she liked it. worked SFE and i worked her near the gate and she was perfect, we played games off of that and she liked it. then we did recall games and she was perfect for those, but her front was a little crooked. worked some set up games and she did ok but she's not sure what i wanted there, so ill practice those at home. we did more, but ive forgotten.

open with rah rah - worked heavy distraction for all things. broad jump, ROF/DOR , and ROH were set up very close to each other with gates separating them, and we heeled around them in a big square. discussed with terry that some of the judges have been commenting on rah's head position for heeling and the head/hand contact we've had. she said if AKC hasn't complained, she wouldnt worry about it right now. it's been mostly other organizations so far that have commented, but i do want to fix it so ill try to set up a private soon. his broad jump was lovely, his ROH was nice, his drops were ok. ROF was forgotten i think, fig8 was nice.

moved to utility - started with go outs. we did dueling go outs - i did them against kris sending out scout, her fcr. i had expressed to terry my frustration with rah and his go outs and how i felt we were lacking fluency, how he didnt seem to understand things, and he goes and does STUNNING go outs. she said its going to take a lot of time for this to be perfected, but i started using the guides to give him a runway the entire way out, because he's not going deadon straight - but that did the trick and he was PERFECT. turned off the gate every time, had no issue with another dog coming at him (though it did cause issue for kris and scout, who didnt want to go out with rah rushing her). then, worked directed jumping and miracle of miracles, rah was perfect for that do - i got 5 jumps in and he was right for each of them????/

signals - ive really got to work on the moving feet and remembering to use my left hand for the wait. and it moved over to the moving stand - hes not clear that his feet are included in this stay, so im going to have to make it clear that when i have him in a stand and i move, if he's been "frozen" he needs to not move at all, including his feet. ideas??????

we did pivots separate of gloves and he was good - but when we brought gloves in, he started scoping the lay of the land for anything to retrieve - so i have to work him with gloves and db's on the ground and pivot him and remind him that until i drop my arm and mark him onto something, he keeps his head up and staring at me. we got 3 of 4 gloves right, but still - it wasn't so pretty.

articles - lots of pressure because we had to do them right in front of kris' other fcr, ghost - who had gone after rah from the crate quite a few times. he missed his first leather, got the metal, and was getting the leather when ghost flipped out - rah bailed quickly and came back, but i resent him and he found it, so that was good.

all in all utility was pretty good!!!! lots to work on still.

and berlin needs .... something.